Morning After
by ObliviousTrace
Summary: Tonks wakes up in St. Mungo's the morning after Sirius' death. RLNT, implied RLSB.


Morning After

Waking up is always the worst part of the day for Tonks.

It's not even that she hates to get out of bed, though she usually would prefer to sleep into the late afternoon. But she's at her most vulnerable in the morning. She wakes up and has no control over her shape.

When she wakes up next to someone, she always remembers to change quickly, just so they don't see her. Most of them wouldn't realize, in any case, but she knows some would recognize and recoil.

Tonks wakes up alone in a hospital bed, confused and covered in bruises. She weakly asks for the nurse and tries to remember something, anything, beyond the feeling of falling and the sense of disappointment.

They send Charlie to see her, to tell her. She's forgotten to change her face, but she doesn't notice his brief flinch. He chokes out the story and can't meet her eyes.

There is a blankness and a numbness to the news that Tonks is glad for. There is just empty space and the soft pillow beneath her head while her throat grapples for something say.

The redhead leaves, crying.

When the memories start flooding in, as she knew they would, they don't focus on Sirius alone. She sees them all together, the four boys who were the center of her small world for most of her life. She remembers her short legs struggling to keep up with her cousin and his friends as they laughed and teased her in that careless, casual way older boys regard younger pests.

Sirius always called her "Nymph", just to annoy her. That is, until the summer she was fifteen and was best friends with a Muggle black belt. When he greeted her, his cocky smile and patronizing voice, the nickname had scarcely left his mouth before he found himself pinned to the ground in a headlock.

She was always "Tonks" after that.

Peter was her least favorite, because he seemed so weak, but when she heard what happened she sat in a closet alone and sobbed into her mother's musty robes. She hurt for both of them. For a while, every time she looked at her fingers she would wince.

She remembers the small cottage in Godric's Hollow, where she went only once to visit James and meet Harry. Her body responded to the feel of the baby in her youthful arms, her maternal urges just beginning to faintly emerge. She wanted to hate Lily, because she had taken one of her boys from her, but she found herself melted and bewitched by the green eyes, red hair, and melodious voice that enraptured everyone.

Remus was the quiet one, the strange one, the one with soft smiles and intelligent phrases and who never teased her like the others did. She loved Sirius for his arrogance and the way he ruffled her hair. She loved James for the winks and the devastating smiles and the sweets he would press into her hands. She loved Peter because they loved him, so she knew that he must be worth caring about. But she loved Remus for his silences, for his possibilities, for everything he never had but always might say to her.

When Tonks first heard he was a werewolf, her first inclination was to laugh at the thought that this quiet, reserved man could transform regularly into a wild, uncontrolled beast. Then she looked hard at the lines in his face and the heartache in his eyes and remembered that they called him Moony.

Tonks is discharged from the hospital that afternoon. She hasn't said a word since Charlie left. Moody escorts her home and glances at her worriedly with his good eye while his magical one whizzes around nonstop.

She refuses to go to her flat and instead goes to Number 12, entering and for once bypassing the troll leg. The house is eerily hushed except for the occasional creel of a mourning Hippogriff upstairs. She waits for Sirius to come greet her, his tired eyes regaining a small amount of their former humor as he emphasizes her last name, his smile daring her and mocking her with the unspoken word.

That's when she knows that he is really, truly gone, because no one would ever call her Nymph again. His and James' deaths and Peter's betrayal hit her in the gut and she fights her own emotions for breath. She slumps against the wall and knocks the troll leg over angrily with her foot.

"Tonks?" The voice is gentle and pitched low. It trembles.

She looks up at Remus and feels part of her respond, part of her wake again. One of them is still here, one of them will always be here to tease her and hold her and please, Merlin, _love _her.

He gasps a little when he sees her face. Remembering that she forgot to change, she moans and buries her head in her hands. She struggles to regain a shape, any shape, but she is hurting to much to concentrate. Her hair explodes in a profusion of color before it finally goes back to the sleek, raven black.

Then his scarred and calloused hands are on hers and he is pulling them away. She doesn't know when he got down on the floor with her, but he is nudging her chin up and forcing her to look at him.

Tonks does so finally, her dark eyes haunted. "I look like Aunt Bell," she spits out with aspersion, her voice cracking.

Remus does not recoil or look away, but instead gently strokes the high cheekbones, aristocratic nose, sculptured forehead, and finally, tenderly, the heavy lids and thick eyelashes.

"You look like Sirius," he says simply, and kisses her.

When she wakes up next to him the next morning, she doesn't change her face. She waits until he wakes up and then she kisses all the scars on his body and he calls her Nymphadora.


End file.
